


You Know You Wanna Shake

by blanchtt



Series: But We Exist [1]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-12 09:07:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10487238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanchtt/pseuds/blanchtt
Summary: She’s dealt with everything from drug addicts to prostitutes to murderers. But whatever’s turning Art off the case only intrigues her more, because it means she’s got a chance to one-up him.





	

 

 

 

The first thing she hears is the voice.

 

Sitting at the table in the break room, Beth rolls her eyes at Raj and Art as they enter, their conversation – _Not in a million fuckin' years, bro_ – puttering out as Raj gets coffee, as Art grabs a chair near her, takes it and turns it around, straddles it. The sound of a woman complaining reaches them, the sounds of a dissatisfied customer nothing new at the station. But Raj sits next to Art, snickering, and elbows him.

 

“You’re the detective, Bell,” he says, nods towards the door, implying that Art should rightly get his ass moving, and Beth watches Art raise his hands defensively.

 

“Fuck, no,” Art scoffs, doing his best to turn and peer around the break-room door from his seat, before turning back to them. “Not. Interested.”

 

She’s dealt with everything from drug addicts to prostitutes to murderers. But whatever’s turning Art off the case only intrigues her more – she’s got a chance to one-up him. “Pussy,” Beth deadpans, and gets up. The woman’s still talking pretty damn loud, apparently not having found a receptive audience, and if no one else is going to do it, then she will. She stands, pushes her chair back in, and dumps the rest of her coffee in the sink before crumpling the paper cup and tossing it in the trash.

 

Beth heads to the front of the station, finds the source of the complaints, approaches the woman slow and careful as she asks, “Ma’am, please. If you’ll follow me, we can discuss this in private.”

 

She’s not surprised to find that the woman’s wearing a huge, fuzzy white coat, a skintight dress, five-inch heels, and jewel-studded sunglasses indoors despite it being the dead of winter – she can say with no exaggeration that this is nothing out of the ordinary. Beth  _is_ surprised – understatement of the year – when she shuts the conference room door behind them, when she sits down and watches the woman pace warily around the room, inspecting the few places that aren’t bare walls and tables, before shrugging off her huge jacket, before sitting down and taking her sunglasses off with a dramatic sigh.

 

“Holy shit,” Beth breathes, because it’s like looking into a mirror, and the woman smiles nervously, like she’s sorry to be the bearer of bad news but not _that_ sorry.

 

“What I actually came in here for was a restraining order,” the woman explains, voice much quieter, and then laughs, light and bubbly. “But, wow. What a coincidence, right?”

 

“Coincidence,” Beth repeats, disbelievingly, and the woman looks around the room, goes serious again and reaches up nervously to brush a curl of hair from her face, leans forward across the table.

 

“It actually might not be safe to talk here,” the woman says conspiratorially, and then smiles winningly – and Beth can swear that she arches her back just a little, reaches out and lays a hand on Beth’s own as she asks, “Can I get your number?”

 

 

-

 

 

She sees Krystal to the door, nearly breaks out into a shit-eating grin as Krystal gives her a little air-kiss goodbye, and tries not to strut back to her desk. From the way Art’s looking at her, she fucks up that last part pretty bad.

 

Oh, well.

 

“No fucking way, Childs,” he says, awed, and Beth smirks, turns and unlocks her computer and starts getting to work on Krystal’s restraining order.

 

 

-

 

 

She has to raid the depths of her wardrobe for something fancy enough to hit up the bar Krystal’s decided they should meet at.

 

She finds a little black dress, steams the wrinkles out of it, and holds it up to herself in the mirror. Rather than sexy, it screams severe – or some combination of both, if anyone were into that. Beth frowns, takes it and shimmies into it anyway because she’s running behind and it’s the only nice dress she’s got. It’s not like they’re on a real date, anyway.

 

She leaves her coat at the door once she gets there, heads to the bar, and there’s Krystal, standing at the bar right where she promised.

 

Krystal jerks at the touch of her fingers on her arm, stiff as she whirls on Beth, but lets out a breath and relaxes once she realizes who it is. And that’s quickly followed up by a grin, Beth barely hanging onto the breakneck change in expressions.

 

“Oh, my, gosh!” Krystal exclaims loudly, each word distinctly pronounced, and Beth is unprepared for Krystal flinging arms around her, hugging her tight. Beth pats her back awkwardly, trying to keep her hand in a respectable position, before Krystal lets her go and stands back, a huge smile on her face that Beth feels herself begin to mirror. “You look _so_ pretty.

 

It’s been a long fucking time since she’s heard that, and Beth shakes her head, motions at Krystal, and manages to reply, “You look nice.”

 

“Flatterer,” Krystal shoots back, pleased at the simple compliment nonetheless, and Beth feels herself relax despite everything. She grabs a drink for herself, motions for them to walk over towards two seat at the end of the bar. “So, yeah,” Krystal starts as the two of them settle down, heads together – although only after she's scanned the room again, eyes flicking over the crowd quickly before visibly relaxing. “You’re not going to believe this." And Beth has no moment to wonder what exactly it is she's not going to believe, because Krystal whispers, "We’re _clones_.”

 

Beth just barely keeps herself from snorting out loud in laughter, reminding herself that Krystal’s gone through some shit lately and probably isn’t in the mood to be laughed at, no matter how outlandish the claim. Instead, she shrugs her shoulders, takes a sip at her drink. “Clones?” she repeats, because even Krystal has to admit that that’s pretty hard to believe.

 

Krystal, surprisingly, hasn’t touched her drink, and only plays with the stem of her martini glass. “Yes,” she repeats, dead serious, and Beth can see her watching her, obviously gauging her reaction. But in her line of work, she’s gotten pretty good at reading emotion – _yeah, right,_ she can hear Art laugh sarcastically – and that guardedness to Krystal's posture right now is almost palpable.

 

She’s always needed to see the facts first, and so Beth's careful with her tone, asks sincerely, “How did you come to that conclusion?”

 

Krystal lets out a breath that Beth is surprised to find she’s seemed to be holding, and her smile loses a watt or two before she finally takes a sip of her drink before replying.

 

“That creep who assaulted me? He’s not the only one out there.”

 

 

-

 

 

She’s always had an insatiable need to get to the very bottom of things, to pull things apart, to dissect and get down to the nuts and bolts. It’s why, to her mother’s consternation, going to church never lasted long; why partners were always few and far between; why detective work suits her more than having kids and settling down.

 

But Krystal comes with no secrets, no murky past – just open concern, and an interest in making sure what almost happened to her never happens to anyone else. And that, Beth is intrigued by.

 

She starts to investigate, skeptical, on her lunch break – and by the end of it can practically feel her skin crawl, the room long gone cold, Art asking her if she's okay. What are the odds of octuplet rapists? And if the guys really are clones – she no longer laughs at the word – then, given her and Krystal’s identical faces, who’s to say they aren’t clones, too? She’d called her mother, too, probed about that old story about how her old friend Susan had helped her find the perfect egg donor, and gotten the usual back – the same scant facts, because there really wasn’t much more to the story than that.  

 

Except now, there is.

 

They end up back at her place, meeting after she’s gotten off her shift. She lets Krystal in once Krystal’s texted her, watches Krystal ogle the place unabashedly as she lets her in and heads back to the kitchen.

 

“You’re right,” Beth admits, pouring Krystal a drink, and looks up just in time to find Krystal beaming. “So what do we do next?”

 

 

-

 

 

It’s when Art almost gets shot by that blonde psychopath that she starts to realize she’s in deeper than she thought she was.

 

She’s a detective, not a fucking _cop_. Beth comes home shaken and scraped up, texts Krystal and heads straight for the cabinet where she keeps the liquor and pours herself a healthy dose of whiskey, ecstatic that her trachea’s still in-tact and at the possibility that the killer clone’s liver might _not_ be.

 

She sits down at the kitchen table, knows she must look a little off because Krystal lets herself in, the front door left unlocked (Beth’s gun tucked in her shoulder harness), and looks immediately worried. “Oh my god. Beth, what happened?” Krystal asks, shedding her coat and reaching up to calm her wind-swept hair before pulling up a chair next to her. She reaches out, and Beth’s surprised at the warmth of the back of Krystal’s hand resting against her forehead. “You don’t look good.”

 

“Thanks,” she deadpans, but adds the best smile she can, for Krystal’s sake. How the fuck do you tell someone they’re being hunted? Well. Hunted by someone _new_. She shakes her head, interrupts whatever Krystal’s going to say and asks, “Do you have a gun?”

 

“Um, excuse me. Do I look like I’d own a gross old gun?” Krystal replies, frowning, and Beth laughs. If anything, she'd imagine Krystal would have a taser in her bag. But that's not going to cut it anymore.

 

“I’ll get you a gun," Beth promises. "And I’m going to teach you to shoot.”

 

 

-

 

 

They are completely different people, and so nothing about Krystal curling up next to her on the couch is weird.

 

Krystal sits with her legs tucked under herself, astoundingly high heels still on and angled away from herself, the fabric of her dress tight across her hips, and Beth looks away, smiles tight as she meets Krystal’s eyes, the conversation between them hitting a rare lull. Krystal usually talks enough for the both of them, and for that Beth is grateful. They’ve been a little too busy surviving to address whatever the hell is going on between them – straight girls are flirty as fuck (one part assumption and one part fact), and she’s _not_ going to fall for that.

 

But right now – both of them a little buzzed and on edge and with Krystal kissing her and hands fumbling at the fly of her slacks, her own hands running up the back of warm thighs and hiking Krystal onto her lap – Beth decides that just because there’s a killer on the loose doesn’t mean she can’t have fun, fuck it.

 

She’s surprised to find the next morning that Krystal is an early riser.

 

“Wouldn’t have taken you for a morning person,” Beth says, knowing that early-morning rasp to her voice always does the trick. And Krystal does look over at her as she shimmies panties back up her thighs, disappears from the room and comes back, dress in hand from where she’d picked it off the living room floor.

 

“Or a boxer,” Krystal offers, and Beth raises a brow, waking up a little more quickly than before.

 

“You box?”

 

“Kickboxing,” Krystal says brightly, and seems to waver between dressing or not, biting her bottom lip softly in though. “Do you have an iron?”

 

Beth props herself up on an elbow, thinks, and decides to ignore the question, reaches out and pats the empty space besides her instead. “Come back to bed,” she offers, and watches as Krystal hesitates, sighs, and drops her dress back on the floor, the fabric apparently too far wrinkled to warrant placement on a hanger.

 

Krystal is tense under her touch, and Beth kisses her way up her neck slowly, lets her hands rest on her trim waist. “What’s the rush?” she asks sincerely, and it doesn’t take long before Krystal speaks.

 

“Do you ever feel,” Krystal asks, voice tight, “like you have to be paranoid all the time?”

 

And it’s a serious question, one that Beth should take more to heart because her being reckless does them all no good. But she interrupts nipping at Krystal’s neck to grin, to squeeze at curves and tilt her head up and murmur in Krystal's ear, “I’m a little too distracted to be paranoid right now.”

 

Usually it’s only Art that laughs with her, their sense of humor similar. And, fittingly, Krystal groans at that, mock-pushes Beth away, and finally laughs as Beth warps arms around her, kisses her, and rolls Krystal under her.

 

 

-

 

 

It’s like they can’t go twenty-four hours without the day devolving into a shit-show. She drops by home, a backpack she’s started to keep in the trunk of her car with the bare necessities in it slung over her shoulder, and texts Krystal – they never knock. Anyone can knock, but only she and Krystal have each other’s new numbers.

 

“We have to leave, now,” Beth says urgently, slipping inside as Krystal opens the door a crack and shuts it behind her.

 

“Okay,” Krystal drawls, clearly wanting more information, but she moves quickly nonetheless. She disappears into the bedroom, comes back out with a black duffel bag and her purse – Beth had convinced her to ditch the hot pink one from Victoria’s Secret in favor of one less memorable – and, Beth is surprised to see, her personal laptop.

 

“I was using your laptop,” Krystal says, her tone of voice clearly leading up to something else, and she grins, unable to hold in her excitement as Beth takes it and slips off her own backpack, stuffs the laptop in there and grabs the charger, too.

 

“Yeah?” she prompts, and Krystal does a little bounce on her heels.

 

“I found another one!”

 

From the looks of it, probably not another killer clone. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Beth says proudly, and grabbing her things starts to head for the garage – they’ll slip out that way, grab the car around the corner. “She’ll help, right?” she confirms, glances over her shoulder and finds Krystal right behind her.

 

“Yeah. She’s a scientist,” Krystal explains, and that weight, the weight that’s started to feel like something she and Krystal can’t hold up together, lessens a little. Another clone. “Offered to let us stay at her place, too,” Krystal elaborates, and that’s perfect because they slip out of the garage, out onto the street, and towards Beth’s car, and Beth has no idea when they'll be able to come back.

 

“Shit,” Beth says, reaching into her backpack. She gropes around, reaches for that familiar pepper-spray keychain, and finds them, unlocks the trunk and places her things in it, lets Krystal toss her bags in there too before turning to her. “I was hoping for a Marine, but I guess that’s useful, too.” Beth grins, hands the keys to Krystal, and nods toward the driver's seat. “Lead the way, Krystal.”

 

 

 

 


End file.
